Cool Homes: Herschede Mansion offers trip back in time

Posted!

A link has been posted to your Facebook feed.

Buy Photo

Hall clock maker and jeweler Frank Herschede hired Cincinnati architect Samuel S. Godley to build a family home for his wife, Sadie, and their eight children. The Herschede mansion at 3886 Reading Road in Avondale is much as it was in 1908 when the family moved in. The Enquirer/Amanda Rossman

Franz Herschede married Lisette Sadie Ratterman on Sept. 11, 1878. Throughout their 44-year marriage, they went as Frank and Sadie. They lost two children at infancy but their other four boys and four girls lived into their 60s and beyond. Provided/Kathleen Conway Bell and Sheila Conway

In 1911, three years after moving into their North Avondale mansion, the Herschede family posed for a formal photograph on the front marble steps. Front row, left to right, are Frank, Mildred, Helen, Adele and Sadie. Back row, left to right are Alfred, Walter, Lawrence, Clara and Edward. Provided/Kathleen Conway Bell and Sheila Conway

The music room is to the left as guests enter the house. Frank Herschede's granddaughter, Mary Lois Jung of Montgomery, remembers learning to play piano in this room and the many mini-concerts held there during her childhood spent living and playing in the seven-bedroom, 8,502-square-foot house. The Enquirer/Amanda Rossmann

The 1926 wedding of Mildred Herschede, the youngest of eight children and Mary Lois Jung's mother, and George Henry "Frank" Jung took place in the Herschede mansion. She was photographed in Roaring Twenties glory in front of the fireplace in the music room. Note what likely is a Herschede mantel clock behind her. Provided/Kathleen Conway Bell and Sheila Conway

Korean War veteran Dale Schlanser was a day away from being deployed to Guam from the naval base in San Diego when he posed for this portrait at a YMCA. "I had it rolled up in a tube and forgot about it until we moved here," he said. Now it's proudly displayed on a wall at the back end of the grand entrance hall. The Enquirer/Amanda Rossmann

Step into the living room through a mahogany pocket door. The painting over the mantel is original as is the Sienna marble tile fireplace surround. The room's carpets in 1908 would have been Persian and the furniture Victorian, but otherwise, the room has changed very little. The Enquirer/Amanda Rossmann

Sadie Ratterman Herschede, on the occasion of her 90th birthday in 1945, gathered her eight children around her for a jovial photograph in front of the mansion's living room fireplace. Front row, left to right: Adele, Mildred, Sadie, Helen and Clara. Back row, left to right, Walter, Alfred, Edward and Lawrence. Provided/Kathleen Conway Bell and Sheila Conway

The living room ceiling features gilded molding in an acanthus leaf motif. Despite the fact that the Herschede mansion served as a funeral home and lawyers' office after the family sold it, almost every original architectural detail has survived. The Enquirer/Amanda Rossmann

The dining room is rich in mahogany panels and built-in, including the round, hand-carved plaque in the over-mantel. Both windows have permanent crocheted shades that Dale Schlanser said were made by French nuns. The Enquirer/Amanda Rossmann

Among Dale Schlanser's stack of antique photos taken inside the Herschede mansion is this one of the south-side sun room. Originally, it was an open porch. Its crocheted window shades and hexagonal-tile floor are original. Provided/Dale Schlanser

Follow the red carpet up the grand staircase of the Frank Herschede mansion in North Avondale to a three-panel leaded window made of emeraude glass. The clock manufacturer and jeweler's home was built in 1908 and retains most of his original architecture. The Enquirer/Amanda Rossmann

Schlanser's French Provincial bedroom furniture set was manufactured by the Union Furniture Co. in Batesville, Ind. He still keeps the $10,000 receipt in a drawer next to his bed. "I don't throw anything away. When you have a big house, you don't have to," he said. The Enquirer/Amanda Rossmann

Schlanser used an old black and white photograph to have the kitchen cabinetry reproduced. This is one room in the house that new owners likely would want to remodel. It features 11-foot ceilings like all the rooms on the first floor. The Enquirer/Amanda Rossmann

Schlanser keeps two General Electric monitor refrigerators, one from 1932 and the other from 1934, in his checkerboard linoleum-floored kitchen. Their doors can be opened by stepping on a button.and built for successful clockmaker/jeweler Frank Herschede and his family. The Enquirer/ Amanda Rossmann The Enquirer/Amanda Rossmann

Dale Schlanser has owned about 50 Packard automobiles over the years, of which these were perhaps the best known. Parked on the side of the Herschede mansion is a 12-cylinder limousine, known as the Packard Twelve, that he bought from George Pepperdine, founder of Pepperdine University in Malibu, Calif. On the right is a 1938 Packard Twelve that was once owned by movie star Lionel Barrymore. Provided/Dale Schlanser

Dale Schlanser is not an American manufacturer, but he has been associated with a couple of classy ones during his 82 years.

First came Packard – not Hewlett's partner, but the luxury automobile maker whose run lasted from 1899 to 1958. Schlanser sold Packards in Cincinnati as a young man and has owned about 50 of them, including a 12-cylinder limousine previously owned by movie star Lionel Barrymore.

Second came Herschede, Cincinnati makers of world class hall clocks since 1902. Schlanser has made the Frank Herschede mansion in North Avondale his home for 28 years, the bulk of them spent enjoying the tubular bell chiming of a Herschede Model 250 hall clock.

Ironically, Schlanser no longer owns a Packard car or Herschede clock. And if he gets his way, he'll shed the mansion as well.

The 17-room Beaux-Arts house designed by Samuel S. Godley and built for company founder Frank Herschede's family of 10 in 1908 can be bought for $474,900.

"We started at $945,000, then dropped it to $795,000, then $725,000, then $695,000 and finally $475,000. And we're holding at that," Schlanser said.

In this day of smaller families and concern for saving energy, selling a seven-bedroom, 8,502-square-foot house with a five-car garage doesn't happen quickly.

The Herschede mansion is structurally and mechanically solid, and its slate roof has been repaired to be water tight, Schlanser said.

Cosmetically, the interior needs some updating, Schlanser said, but the original beauty of the mansion is all there.

Schlanser was familiar with the house as far back as the early 1960s. Before he married his late wife Emma in 1962, he shared an apartment with a roommate at The Crescent, located just a few blocks south of the Herschede mansion on Reading Road.

"I used drive by it on my way to work. Jeez, I thought, it looks like the French Embassy," Schlanser said.

He recalls being struck by the super-smooth mahogany pocket doors, high baseboards, ceiling-to-baseboard corner trim and dining room pilasters when viewing it in 1984.

"I told my wife that the house is so beautiful inside and in such good repair. Let's buy it," he said. "We moved here in 1986 and I've been here ever since."

Atop the beauty list, in his opinion, is the mahogany woodwork in the living and dining rooms.

"Have you ever seen molding like that?" he said, pointing to the mahogany ringing the living room ceiling that was crafted by Herschede Clock Co. cabinet makers.

CLOSE

Dale Schlanser is down to one Packard car, and it's in a print on the wall that talks a tall tale.

Formal design creates sense of grandeur

The mansion's beauty actually begins at the curb. The symmetrical sandstone manor has three stories, each with windows of different designs. Decorative quoins wrap around the corners from the second story up. The formal design also features polished granite Greek columns that flank the entrance.

Climb eight steps (they're concrete, but were originally marble) and enter a marble vestibule through double doors designed by architect Samuel S. Godley and crafted by the Cincinnati iron works company L. Schreiber & Sons. The company also crafted the double-winged grand staircase's railing out of bronze.

Stroll across the red-carpeted oak floor in the foyer and take in the drama of the stairwell and landing's three-panel leaded window made of emeraude glass. It's easy to imagine the grand feeling the house gave its guests.

There are four large bedrooms off of a wide hall at the top of the stairs, each taking up a corner of the second floor. Down the middle are a parlor and library.

On the third floor are three more bedrooms and a front-to-back ballroom with a barrel ceiling where, undoubtedly, some grand parties were held and well as Ping-Pong tournaments.

Potential primed for a preservationist

With the right furniture, new period chandeliers, and a few repairs and some remodeling, Schlanser believes that ambiance could be re-created.

The retired car salesman said people were shocked when he and Emma moved out of a sprawling 1928 Tudor revival house with a swimming pool in Indian Hill to a smaller one with no pool on Reading Road.

"I haven't regretted it at all," he said of moving into an old city neighborhood. "I'll tell ya. This has been a comfortable house. I've never lived in a house so long."

Herschede history

To learn more about the Herschede Hall Clock Co., go to Sunday's Our History pages, . Here's a little history about the family and mansion:

• Patriarch Frank Herschede (1857-1922) was the only child of German immigrants. He started making watches as a teenager, moved on to clocks and became wealthy through hard work and good business decisions.

• Herschede's flagship line was its tubular bell hall clocks. Dale Schlanser used to have a classic Model 250 in his foyer that chimed like Big Ben.

• Frank and Sadie Herschede had 10 children, two of whom died in their first year. The other eight – four boys and four girls – lived to be at least 60. Frank died at 65, Sadie at 94.

• The family sold the mansion two years after Sadie died at age 94 in 1950. Since then, it has been used as a funeral hall and lawyers' offices before becoming the Schlansers' residence.

• Dale Schlanser expanded the two-car garage with upstairs apartment to hold three more of his treasured cars.

Memories of mansion living

Frank Herschede's granddaughter, 87-year-old Mary Lois Jung of Montgomery, is the last Herschede descendant who lived at 3886 Reading Road.

Her mother, Frank's youngest child Mildred (1899-1984), and her father, foot brace company founder George Henry Jung Jr. (1897-1948), moved Mary Lois and her sister Ruth into the mansion to help her grandmother, Sadie Herschede, in the early years of the Great Depression.

"We always giggled when they called it a mansion," Mary Lois said. "It was a really big house and easy to hide in, which we did."

"Grandma Herschede was the head of a big family, and they would always come over, the sons and daughters and grandchildren," Mary Lois recalled. "There were a lot of family visitors all the time."

Despite having seven sets of Herschede aunts, uncles and cousins, Mary Lois made time to be alone by reading volumes such as the Book of Knowledge in the library or riding her bicycle around North Avondale.

Mary Lois graduated from Summit Country Day School and earned her medical degree at the Women's Medical School of Pennsylvania. She then traveled the world, from Pakistan to Papua New Guinea, for 30 years, working as a surgeon with the Medical Mission Sisters of Philadephia.

Among her memories of her home life:

• All the bathtubs in the house. "Ruthie and I would have liked to have had a shower," she said.

• Roller skating with Ruth and her cousins – she had more than 40 – in the basement.

• Playing Ping-Pong, tinkling the keys of a "Tin Pan Alley" piano and listening to the Victrola in the third-floor ballroom.

• Listening to the "Amos and Andy" show with Ruth on a radio that had a button on it that read "TV."

• Carving lollipop sticks for her mother, grandmother and the maid, who wrapped them in cloth and meticulously cleaned the mansion's woodwork every spring.

• Sneaking bits of corn while the maid canned fresh vegetables from Grandmother Herschede's garden and a public market near Music Hall.

• Walking with family members to attend services at Bellarmine Chapel on Victory Parkway and with her sister and father to Xavier University on Fridays to catch what was left of a high school football game.

• Attending the funerals of her grandmother, aunt and father that were held in the living room of the Herschede mansion.